Guild Wars 2

My points of view
Through a series of questions & answers

Q: Ultimately, what is wrong with the current balance in spvp?
A: Since the release of HoT, we have a game where only 6 out of the 9 classes are able to be played competitively and only 1 build for each class is viable. Some things are too good and most other things useless. This is limiting the player’s options to be able to play the way they want to play. They are getting bored and they are leaving the game.

Q: Where did the critical problems within the current spvp balance begin?
A: 9/10 older players who have been avid players, would agree with me when I say that the problems began on 6/23/2015, when traits became specializations, condis began stacking and the power creep was unleashed. These were good changes but there was not enough balancing to the core game after these changes before releasing HoT. When HoT was released, this made the already existent balance issues, just that much more complex.

Q: What is wrong with HoT?
A: HoT specializations are too powerful and they are too narrow in job role offered. Between these 2 problems, it funnels players in to a situation where they must use the new powerful specializations to keep up competitively and they must design their build archetype around that new specialization to optimize it’s purpose. Since the new specializations encourage very particular job roles, this ends up in situations such as:

• Druids needing to play team support, DPS Peel roles no longer viable.
• Dragonhunters needing to play ranged DPS trap role, team support no longer viable.
• Ect.. Ect.. There are plenty of other threads explaining these issues that I’m sure you are aware of.

Q: What else is wrong with HoT?
A: HoT lead us out of the realm of “balance issues” and in to the heartland of “critical balance issues”. Forum users are no longer complaining about small balance issues. They are complaining about huge differences in the distribution of power between weapon skills, utility skills, trait selections and even class choices as a whole. I need give only 1 example: Why play a Warrior/Berserker when you can play Revenant/Herald? The Revenant/Herald does everything a Warrior/Berserker can do and more but it does it literally, twice as effectively. This isn’t just an issue with a utility vs. a utility or a weapon choice vs. weapon choice “of which many problems exist”. No, this is an entire class that can’t even begin to compare to the natural power & utility that another class possesses. These sorts of gaps in raw power need to be eliminated.

Q: What can be done about these problems?
A: Take a step back, balance the core game first and make sure it’s solid. Then take a look at HoT. Though if the design team insists on direct patching to HoT, here are my suggestions for what needs to happen to achieve a more balanced competitive scene with more viability. It’s a quick fix but I believe it would be somewhere in the right direction:

• Leave Warrior/Berserker the way it is. Slightly buff the heal skills. It seriously needs it after the power creep.
• Leave Thief/Daredevil the way it is.
• Slightly nerf both Revenant side and Herald side specializations. “Slightly”
• Raise Guardian/Dragonhunter’s vitality up 1 step.
• Elementalist/Tempest can stay the way it is.
• Mesmer/Chronomancer can be kept the same but Moa needs 2 changes: Lower the duration from 10s to 8s “10s is too long after the power creep” and program it in so we can jump as a Moa.
• Ranger can be kept the same. Turn down the rate in which celestial force is gained on a Druid through regeneration and healing. Turn up the rate in which celestial force is gained through dealing damage and taking damage. This is huge – If you did this, it would enable Druids to play DPS roles again and be able to access celestial avatar often enough to survive. As of now, the celestial avatar class feature is impractical to use unless you stat for enormous heal factor. This change would also still allow the bunker Druids to do what they do now so long as they are actually attacking to make up for the loss of gain from raw heal. You get the picture, balance the numbers so DPS is viable but the bunker doesn’t become over powered.
• Necromancer/Reaper’s main imbalance is still in my opinion, chill. The damage or duration still needs a slight nerf. It’s the AoE chilling that puts the OP in to the Reaper.
• Engineer weapons need a slight buff. Scrapper needs a nerf to the boon duration department. All of it’s boons.
  ~ Just my broad opinions without too much detail.

Q: Anything else to add?
A: Just a few things:

• I understand that balancing a game such as Guild Wars 2 is not an easy task but we really need a heavy balance patch, next time around.
• The point of this thread was to help produce positive, constructive and concise feedback from avid users, in one spot.
• To those who post feedback here, consider the difference between suggesting “game balances” and “game overhauls”. The objective is to suggest well thought out game balances. Also, when making suggestions/comments, try to consider the big picture of how one thing effects everything when changed.

~ And please keep the discussion clean.

scrappers need nerfs across the boards, not just boons
it already takes 2 people to take one scrapper down, i don’t want to know how much it would take to kill scrapper if other classes get nerfed

generally all elites (yes daredevil and berserker including) need to be nerfed to core spec level

Why would Guardian/DH need their health increased? Are you out of your mind? They already have insane mitigation:

Shelter: 2s block 30sec cd
Shield of Courage: 5sec block (7secs when traited) 65cd traited
Renewed Focus
Which leads to another Shield of Courage
Then there is Wings of Resolve heal which can be done twice with renewed focus.

They also have high uptime of protection and aegis…

Why would they need more health again?

Aza, the Guardian/Dragonhunter damage mitigation capabilities are actually quite poor after the power creep. Tempests are a far superior bunker/support to any Guardian build at this point and even Scrappers/Heralds running Marauder are much more difficult to kill than a Bunker Guardian.

This is mainly due to the Guardian’s low health pool. It isn’t large enough to survive bursting after the power creep, when his skills are all on cool down. This is why Dragonhunters go down first in team fights and why people don’t play Guardian Bunkers anymore.

To become competitive again or even viable as a team support in comparison to a Druid or Tempest, it needs more vitality.

I agree on the fundamental concept that the game suffered serious power creep. I disagree however on some of the suggestions you’ve made.

For example, druid dps more celestial uptime. I see your point in making dps ranger viable, I play it myself and its a fun spec I miss being viable. However, my suggestion would be only to nerf the healing part, because, as you stated, we need to reduce the power creep.

Now, obviously if you only nerf ranger without a nerf to other classes you make things worse, but the direction should be, imo, the following:

Aim to reduce the amount of things 1 single skill does. What do I mean by this? Look at warrior. The reason warrior is not viable is because its weapon skills (and a lot of utilities) are still functioning the old way, being for a specific purpose and doing mostly a single thing.
Looking at some of the elite specs or even just other classes utilities you can see the difference. One example could be warrior axe 5 vs revenant staff 5. Just damage vs more damage, evade, ton of CC.
There are plenty of examples for this not just from revenant, but also scrapper, necro, mesmer etc…

So why should we make skills do one specific thing like they were ? Because in this way the game is more about a move and a response and requires more thought process. At the current state, say a revenant want to break stun with Glint #7 and oops he also blinded your heartseeker and then bursted you.

Bottom line, Skills doing multiple things just makes the game a spam-all-skills-as-fast-as-you-can-and-win type of game which most of us want to avoid.

Except for what I mentioned I completely agree with your post and hope that AN takes it seriously if they see it.

All elite specs need a nerf. Some of them, like warrior and thief, just need less of a nerf.

style.6173:

All elite specs need a nerf. Some of them, like warrior and thief, just need less of a nerf.

This sums up all possible discussions to this thread, anyone who played the game a decent amount will agree that all of the elite opilazations need nerfs. Problem is the devs will not do any significant balance changes, as they have repeatedly proven over the years, hell they do not even have a dedicated balance team. Just accept the fact that gw2 pvp and esports is a joke and move on.

Trevor Boyer.6524:

Aza, the Guardian/Dragonhunter damage mitigation capabilities are actually quite poor after the power creep. Tempests are a far superior bunker/support to any Guardian build at this point and even Scrappers/Heralds running Marauder are much more difficult to kill than a Bunker Guardian.

This is mainly due to the Guardian’s low health pool. It isn’t large enough to survive bursting after the power creep, when his skills are all on cool down. This is why Dragonhunters go down first in team fights and why people don’t play Guardian Bunkers anymore.

To become competitive again or even viable as a team support in comparison to a Druid or Tempest, it needs more vitality.

You are comparing a core spec to a elite spec. Of course the elite specs are currently better.

Trevor Boyer.6524:

Aza, the Guardian/Dragonhunter damage mitigation capabilities are actually quite poor after the power creep. Tempests are a far superior bunker/support to any Guardian build at this point and even Scrappers/Heralds running Marauder are much more difficult to kill than a Bunker Guardian.

This is mainly due to the Guardian’s low health pool. It isn’t large enough to survive bursting after the power creep, when his skills are all on cool down. This is why Dragonhunters go down first in team fights and why people don’t play Guardian Bunkers anymore.

To become competitive again or even viable as a team support in comparison to a Druid or Tempest, it needs more vitality.

This is wrong…Tempest must heavily invest in Healing Power to have decent healing and we’re talking about 1000+ healing power where the Dragon Hunter can have 0 healing power and still have heal burst skills with a 2k+ base, they’re free to use any build from burst to support, where ele can only stay full heal or die otherwise

If you want added vitality on guardian , you MUST lose those ridiculous heal base stats on meditation ( 2k+ heal burst on 16 CD+ at 0 Healing power ) and start to actually invest in healing power.

The only reason why you’re allowed those high value it’s because of your low HP, lose that and you lose also your rights to keep those values

And elementalist is not fine at all, everything is either toughness/healing or you die to a sneeze, there is no middle ground and that’s bullkitten

Agreed on scrapper nerf

From the position i sit in, I find the following problems to be an issue

¹ Classes Lack Identity.
* _It seems that classes really have no identity due to the nature of the abilities they have, specifically ultimate’s and trinkets (ability 6-ultimate). For example, You get boons from every class, when you could be designing a specific class to be a “support” who’s soul objective is boon application to group". There seems to be guardian talents geared toward this like the staff talent etc.

This is highly important, but my position is this, Classes should gain (role) identity something like that as follows:

Guardian: Healer, Boon Support, Direct Damage, Bunker
Ranger: Range Direct Damage, Melee Direct Damage, Healer, Condition Cleanse
Necromancer: Direct Damage, Condition Damage, Condition Cleanse
Elementalist: Direct Damage, Condition Damage, Healer.
Warrior: Direct Damage, Bunker, Boon Support
Thief: Direct Damage, Map Mobility, Condition Damage
Mesmer: Direct Damage, Condition Damage, Support (With lots of invisibility, movements like teleport, etc)
Revenent: Direct Damage, Tank, Condition Cleanse
Engineer: Direct Damage, Condition Damage, Crowd Control

With the above said, the classes should specialize in something:

Guardian: Boon Support
Ranger: Condition Cleanse
Necromancer: Condition Damage
Elementalist: Versitility (can do it all, talents just change each aspect to be stronger)
Warrior: Direct Damage
Thief: Map Mobility
Mesmer: Support – A unique type that is for movement/confusion & invisibility
Revenent: Tank,
Engineer: Crowd Control

So to be clear on this. Every class should have 3 focus’s from talents, and all talent tree’s should focus fully in that aspects. Weapon skills should be converted to native benefits for just having the spec as opposed to making people spec into them. A lot of the 6-10 skills should be deleted or reworked and every classes application should be unique.

If you only have white, black as options, all you can make is white black and gray.

Lastly on this topic, The Abilities (6 to ultimate) Need to also be more independent of each other. That means a class like Guardian should have trinkets (or aura’s) that automatically apply the same boon every x seconds. This is different then every class having some sort of 6-10 ability set that all provide boons.

Another great example is the healing trinkets. Everyone Heals. Why cant we get some other “Preventative” aspects in here? (like absorbs or blocks which play a hugely important aspect in balance).

² Bad Concepts of Power.
* _This one is a big strange to address but its very specific. Power creep is extremely dangerous to play with. Historically, It kills games. (no joke!). No game in the industry has been able to survive it’s effects. WoW Is the best fighter to the disease, but i would term wow a “hospital ICU” patient because of these aspects. I have to express it like this because it’s extremely important.

When we talk about power, we should not apply more then a variance of 10%. Small gains allow for the positive aspects to be in play with VP, but do not bring about enough of a change to implement the negative aspects.

Power in most cases should be found in in direct applications. For Example " your burns now chill the target". Power in this capacity are in effect, that reduce the other opponent down, as opposed to buffing you up. Now you might think they are the same, however you cannot cleanse a Power creep inflated enemy, but you can cleanse a chill_

³ Horrible Mechanics

• _ The Way that Conditions and Boons work in this game are horrid. If it was like WoW it’d be 100 times better, make 100 times more sense. I’m sorry, but this is one aspect of GW2 I find to be highly counter-intuitive and just down right wrong._

⁴ Balance around the melee.

• _ a while back blizzard caught on to if you balance the game around melee, the melee will be in a good position. This means that you need to get on reworks of the range classes and remove them almost all kiting, cc abilities, and move them to melee so they can catch up and get a hold of the range_

⁵ Lastly and most importantly.

• _ Stop lying to your player base. Don’t tell them “Do everything you want in your build” Then force them to play a specific spec as part of your “design philosphy”. Im tempted to write a really nice red post about this telling people why they should avoid GW2 and Go back to WoW. *ditch the “forced class play”.

If you want to keep people, I will tell you the secret to success in an mmo.

You make it so the guild has objectives (things they get along the way to the goal).
You make the goals worth the drive (but not overly hard to get)
You make the goals unobtainable for people out side of a guild
You make sure that above conditions apply to both PvE and PvP aspects

As long as you do this you will have a successful game (unless you do something stupid like massive amounts of power creep).

I remember before the HoT expansion, they did some rebalancing or changing that put in all these specializations and core traits, whatnot. They wound up improving all the classes in my opinion by allowing many core traits that players didn’t select to become passive. That was big improvement as far as I am concerned.

Now they improve characters even more with elite specialization and I hear players calling for nerf of that. Wow.

But in any game, players playing it long enough figure out the most effective and competitive builds and everyone either has to go with it or counter it to some extent. That always takes away choices and unique possibilities for diversity. It’s the same old story from one game to the next, power burst, high crit dmg glass canon chars versus high evasion, high toughness/vitality low damage type support chars.

It’s not different here than any other game I’ve played so far.

Anari.2137:

As long as you do this you will have a successful game.

It really is not practical at all when you write these wordy posts about your ideal game, as if GW2 could become self aware of its flawed theoretical foundations and be redesigned.

Think low hanging fruit – like what are the most reasonable, feasible, and effective changes that can be made to have the biggest improvement in the enjoyment in PvP?

It’s unanimous from the community’s word of mouth on balance: uniformly nerf the survivability, pressure, or both, of Elite specs. PvP has almost zero build choice because we tacked on 1 ultra elite playstyle per class to classes that often had multiple strong playstyle previously.

I agree with almost all the points, and definitely good point about druid.

The main issue I see with the proposed changes is that we are reducing the power creep (less damage from classes) but tempest is left untouched, and they would just heal everyone up to full constantly since there isnt a lot of damage output. That could easily remake the game into a replay of s1 since no one would die.
__________________________________________________________________
I think anet should actually tone down the guardian f3 a bit, that one is basically a minor invuln, and try to remake bunker guard. They could do this by buffing things like Altruistic healing or giving staff auto a small self-heal.

It would also provide an alternative to bunker tempest, and who doesn’t like more options?

It was something a lot of people liked playing back in the day and I think it would be a step in the right direction to revamp it.
__________________________________________________________________
On the note of the scrapper…

Rifle / pistol / shield should be made viable again, I won’t argue there. But every hammer “skill” has defensive value attached, save auto. That doesn’t promote skilled play. I actually played scrapper once, and it was way easier to play than necro.

ANet has made it more than evident that they have no idea how to balance a game, especially given its current state.

Instead of putting any sort of blind faith into the development team and hope that they can pull off some sort of miracle and actually balance the game at least to a borderline even level, put your effort into reminding potential players that this game isn’t worth playing.

I have to disagree with your spec vs trait comment. All the builds before were the same as well it didnt change with the specs.

Eles were running 0-0-2-6-6 or 2-0-0-6-6. If you wanted fresh air it was 0-6-2-6-4

This went for every class. There was always 1-2 builds, even after this patch it opened up so many more potential builds since they raised the condi pressure. You started seeing burn guardians/ medi dps/bunker guardian. You saw shoutbow/dps rampage, you saw conjure weapons, d/d, fresh air, staff eles.

Depending what what the team wanted that player to do though there was always 1 APEX build.

Also id like to point out you are asking for anet to completely go over everything in the game which i doubt and company would do. They want people to buy HOT so maing core builds viable probably isnt in there vision for the game. Also having 6 out of 9 classes being used is probably a good thing to them.

Think about it, other ESports games like LOL and DOTA have hundreds of champions but you can dumb it down to maybe 20 or less in use. In GW2 66% of the classes are visible at elite level play.

Trevor Boyer.6524:

snip

The first 2/3 of your post were really good but when it came to what you think would balance the game: The 2 classes out of the game should stay like they are while all other classes get a buff. Alright then, that won’t fuel the power creep.

Scrapper needs a shave in all aspects – Hammer dmg coefficient, sustain and stealth duration.

Revenant needs major dmg nerf to staff and sword and buff to their unused legend Ventari.

Warriors need dmg nerf to Gunflame and Arc divider and and buff to their sustain and axe burst skills (evis and decapitate -slight buff). Stances should be reduced to 40 sec remove the dual endure pain which procs at 25%. The last stand trait should reduce CD by another 20% instead of increasing stance duration by 20%. Shout and warhorn (unnecessary) nerf should be reverted.

DH needs a shave to the virtues. Core guardian’s virtues are underwhelming compared to DH’s. True shot CD increased to 6 sec and reduce its dmg by 10%.

Elementalist – Auramancer trait is too powerful IMO. Personal healing is ok but healing to allies is OP and the aura spamming. Reflection uptime needs a nerf. Their DPS spec need buffs. Staff is nearly useless in high level pvp.

Necromancrmer – As stated by everyone, chill needs MAJOR dmg nerf by atleast 50%. Chill already is an OP condition and dealing that much dmg overtime (when traited) on top of that is broken given how much access they got to chill. Boon corruption should be removed from scepter AA. The GM trait in SR line which breaks stun and gives a stability should also give protection access to increase survivality.

Mesmer – Moa reduced to 5 sec and CD reduced to 120s. F5 no longer works on elite skills. Conditions on shatter needs shave -8 stacks of confusion, torment, bleeding and its constant application makes condi chrono king of 1v1 (not to mention moa).

GENERAL:

Please make boons, conditions and CCs rarer. Their abundance is killing the fun in pvp.

I was thinking: Hey a reasonable approach on balancing, not loosing iteslf in too much detail and narrowing dwon some core issues.
Then: ‘Elementalist/Tempest can stay the way it is’
Cant take it serious now, as good as some other points you make are.
Ele is in an awful state. Painfully op to fight against and painfully boring and unrewarding to play.
Its probaly the most mindless build Ive ever seen and a disgrace to everyone who enjoyed builds like fresh air.
However. In general you are right: either these changes, or a full rework from the ground up. And the small changes can obviously be deployed faster and arent potentially breaking the game in another way.
Problems like general aoe spam and hard cc spam should still be adressed, but not asap.

Supreme.3164:

This is wrong…Tempest must heavily invest in Healing Power to have decent healing and we’re talking about 1000+ healing power where the Dragon Hunter can have 0 healing power and still have heal burst skills with a 2k+ base, they’re free to use any build from burst to support, where ele can only stay full heal or die otherwise

If you want added vitality on guardian , you MUST lose those ridiculous heal base stats on meditation ( 2k+ heal burst on 16 CD+ at 0 Healing power ) and start to actually invest in healing power.

The only reason why you’re allowed those high value it’s because of your low HP, lose that and you lose also your rights to keep those values

And elementalist is not fine at all, everything is either toughness/healing or you die to a sneeze, there is no middle ground and that’s bullkitten

As for elementalist this might be true, let’s looks at meta druid
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Druid_-_Bunker_Druid

Woah lad… I don’t see that druid has a problem with having it all at once. (Feels like Cele ele v2 + pets.)
I’ve never touched a ranger in my life nor druid. Yesterday I tried it with some random ranger I made, grabbed this build and went PvP. People fought very well and it was a tight match so there is no talk here about weak opponents.
I randomly pushed buttons and did the thing when stuff went grim. Most of the time it turned out that unknowingly I turned the tide of several encounters and teamfights.

There are not many guardians for a reason in both PvP and PvE. Guess that just updating traits should do the trick.
Oh wait… they already did that and called it a Revenant :I

EDIT:
Just one little thing to compare between shouts: “Receive the light” and “We heal as
one”.

1st one has a long cooldown even with trait and heals kinda good with healing power, in a cone and that’s all.
2nd is a 20 (16 with trait) second cooldown with a tough heal for you and your pet which is further empowered with healing power but also grants swiftness and regeneration.
You can say that 2nd skill doesn’t heal allies just like guardian’s, but this spot is filled with druid’s staff.
Somewhat it seems fair but then, why is 1st shout considered trash when looking at the big picture?

Last but not least, someone said that Litanny of Wrath heals too much… what a shame that I can’t slap people through the internet :C

kdaddy.5431:

I have to disagree with your spec vs trait comment. All the builds before were the same as well it didnt change with the specs.

Eles were running 0-0-2-6-6 or 2-0-0-6-6. If you wanted fresh air it was 0-6-2-6-4

This went for every class. There was always 1-2 builds, even after this patch it opened up so many more potential builds since they raised the condi pressure. You started seeing burn guardians/ medi dps/bunker guardian. You saw shoutbow/dps rampage, you saw conjure weapons, d/d, fresh air, staff eles.

To be fair, the OP didn’t say the switch to specializations was bad – just that the subsequent balancing was insufficient. The update came with a big overhaul, and it resulted in quite a bit of power creep on its own, what with the combination of traits, new baselines and the 2 additional slots.
I believe what he meant is that when you look at the power creep over the past year, while HoT contributed more, it all started in June.

style.6173:

All elite specs need a nerf. Some of them, like warrior and thief, just need less of a nerf.

Yep. Buffing core specs is not an option, it will make the game even more unplayable.

Chaith described the problem perfectly imo:

Chaith.8256:

No easy solutions.

Scrappers, Tempests, and Druids have over the top group support/personal survivability in the current PvP builds.

Revenant and Reaper have very easily landed, over the top pressure while still having a good amount of defensive utility.

Continuum split Moa morph & Portal is really just the last viable profession here, I mean Chronomancer.

Looking on the bright side, they’re all equally overpowered.

The only problem is that every build that players have been using for 3 years is dead. We traded a ton of builds for a few next-level builds, it pretty much killed diversity.

Let’s just think of all the top meta builds that used to be playable, right before HoT launched.

The people who politely request that everything be nerfed, they probably just want to be able to play some of these builds again:

• Rampage Warrior
• D/F Fire & Arcana Eles
• D/D Earth & Arcana Eles
• Burn Guardian
• Bunker Guardian
• Mantra Mesmer
• PU Mesmer
• Power Grenade Rifle Engi
• Signet Classic Necro
• Shadow Arts Medic Thief
• S/D Acro Thief

And the patch before that

• Cele Engi
• Condi Engi
• DPS Meditation Guard
• Shoutbow Warrior
• Power Necro
• Non-Meta builds that actually came close, like Resbot warrior, Staff ele, Fresh Air ele, Static Discharge engi, Hambow Warrior.

It’s not just about builds either, at some point we shot to balance teamfight strategies with skirmish strategies, having to sacrifice battle strength to get portal/moa, and keeping some higher risk/reward builds in the mix instead of 5 self-sustained super-soldiers.

For the first time we added traits and an entire new profession but we kissed goodbye every build that we’ve found fun over the years, as well as Thief/Warrior/Guardian. I think later in 2014 until October 2015 is the period that set the bar for PvP profession balance in this game. Balance has improved so much since the Expansion came out, but we’re still so far from being where we were.

Also, Salamanders thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Balance-team-Don-t-buff-warriors/first

Trevor Boyer.6524:

My points of view
only 1 example: Why play a Warrior/Berserker when you can play Revenant/Herald? The Revenant/Herald does everything a Warrior/Berserker can do and more but it does it literally, twice as effectively.

Actually no, it doesn’t. Berserker’s main role is team support in the form of banners and might distribution thus massively increasing the team dps, also warrior comes with pretty decent personal dps as well. Revenant can provide might but not nearly as effectively due to shared empowerment trait having that 1 second cooldown, the most a revenant is going to provide for might is 8-12 stacks. whereas warrior gives 25 to 7 people at the least.

Revenant only has about 15k dps, this is among the lowest in the game only above healing specs and chronomancers. The only reason to bring a revenant at all is for 50% boon duration facet.

Remember, if you nerf pvp, you’re also nerfing PVE

• Leave Warrior/Berserker the way it is. Slightly buff the heal skills. It seriously needs it after the power creep.

• Slightly nerf both Revenant side and Herald side specializations. “Slightly”

Again, revenant is among the lowest dps in the game as is, no nerf needed.

• Raise Guardian/Dragonhunter’s vitality up 1 step.

Guardians have always had a low healthpool, they survive via active defenses.

• Elementalist/Tempest can stay the way it is.

The healing on stronghold doorbreakers needs to be nerfed hardcore.

• Mesmer/Chronomancer can be kept the same but Moa needs 2 changes: Lower the duration from 10s to 8s “10s is too long after the power creep” and program it in so we can jump as a Moa.

Even 8 seconds is still too high imo it’s effectively a 10 second daze.

• Ranger can be kept the same. Turn down the rate in which celestial force is gained on a Druid through regeneration and healing. Turn up the rate in which celestial force is gained through dealing damage and taking damage. This is huge – If you did this, it would enable Druids to play DPS roles again and be able to access celestial avatar often enough to survive. As of now, the celestial avatar class feature is impractical to use unless you stat for enormous heal factor. This change would also still allow the bunker Druids to do what they do now so long as they are actually attacking to make up for the loss of gain from raw heal. You get the picture, balance the numbers so DPS is viable but the bunker doesn’t become over powered.

no arguments here

• Necromancer/Reaper’s main imbalance is still in my opinion, chill. The damage or duration still needs a slight nerf. It’s the AoE chilling that puts the OP in to the Reaper.

Necromancer is good, but it’s not OP, no nerf is needed. Chill only ticks for like 600 damage and doesn’t stack intensity like burning, you want to nerf a condition? nerf burning.

• Engineer weapons need a slight buff. Scrapper needs a nerf to the boon duration department. All of it’s boons.

Of all the nerfs scrapper needs, this is among the lowest of priorties of what really needs to be nerfed.

Trevor Boyer.6524:

• Druids needing to play team support, DPS Peel roles no longer viable.

This is not the problem, at least for ranger. DPS druid works quite well actually. The problem is that even if you want to play a dps build you are better with taking druid (and bm/nm aka “meta traitlines”) instead of offensive traitlines. Because by going full offensive you lose much more survability than you gain dmg. It is the synergie between those 3 traitlines that offer not only high suvability even with zerk stats but also some extra dmg (might stacking, stronger pets), so other traitlines simply can’t compete.

Buffing druid traitline for dps roles would increase this problem even more.

Generally some traits and skills offer too much in one thing, so there is no trade-off anymore between dmg and defense.

Chaith.8256:

Anari.2137:

As long as you do this you will have a successful game.

It really is not practical at all when you write these wordy posts about your ideal game, as if GW2 could become self aware of its flawed theoretical foundations and be redesigned.

Think low hanging fruit – like what are the most reasonable, feasible, and effective changes that can be made to have the biggest improvement in the enjoyment in PvP?

It’s unanimous from the community’s word of mouth on balance: uniformly nerf the survivability, pressure, or both, of Elite specs. PvP has almost zero build choice because we tacked on 1 ultra elite playstyle per class to classes that often had multiple strong playstyle previously.

+1 this

Heck even if they use a blanket “Increase CD of all elite spec traits/utilities by 20%, Decrease Damage of all Elite Spec traits/utilities by 20%”. This would IMO put us in a better place than we are now.

Of course I’m vein overly broad but you get the picture. Stop making the Elite Spec an absolute necessity for each class.

Chaith.8256:

Anari.2137:

As long as you do this you will have a successful game.

It really is not practical at all when you write these wordy posts about your ideal game, as if GW2 could become self aware of its flawed theoretical foundations and be redesigned.

Think low hanging fruit – like what are the most reasonable, feasible, and effective changes that can be made to have the biggest improvement in the enjoyment in PvP?

It’s unanimous from the community’s word of mouth on balance: uniformly nerf the survivability, pressure, or both, of Elite specs. PvP has almost zero build choice because we tacked on 1 ultra elite playstyle per class to classes that often had multiple strong playstyle previously.

The difference between you and me is found in a pharse by Albert Einstien who said
“insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results”.

When will you get that the foundation is not solid, and doing a rotation of nerfs/buffs will never fix it?

Let me give you an example.

If Power creep was not on amulets, and runes and was only on the talent specs, and abilities themselves, you would have static values to modify. This means that after a while (eventually) you will get to a point of relative balance.

Your trying to diagnose the game with the problem “this is to op” when your not addressing the cause of “why it is op”.

I am providing a cure to the situation, where you (and others like you) are advocating for medicine that just dulls the symptoms until never patch.

Anari.2137:

When will you get that the foundation is not solid, and doing a rotation of nerfs/buffs will never fix it?

Ah someone who gets it.

~ Quick note

Great feedback so far but let’s make sure we understand a given poster’s post before commenting on it. Keep it coherent and try not to create convoluted responses.

Also, totally agree with Chaith’s statement about mid 2014 up to October 2015 setting the expected standard for spvp balance. I’d say that time frame also set the standard for what most people expect in terms of “how many builds are viable to play”. I don’t think the community will feel satisfied until HoT achieves a similar dynamic of balance & variety.

And Salamander’s post in that link goes hand in hand with this. It won’t be able to be achieved until the HoT specializations are brought back to par with core specializations or at least given a good shave.

Anari.2137:

Chaith.8256:

Anari.2137:

As long as you do this you will have a successful game.

It really is not practical at all when you write these wordy posts about your ideal game, as if GW2 could become self aware of its flawed theoretical foundations and be redesigned.

Think low hanging fruit – like what are the most reasonable, feasible, and effective changes that can be made to have the biggest improvement in the enjoyment in PvP?

It’s unanimous from the community’s word of mouth on balance: uniformly nerf the survivability, pressure, or both, of Elite specs. PvP has almost zero build choice because we tacked on 1 ultra elite playstyle per class to classes that often had multiple strong playstyle previously.

The difference between you and me is found in a pharse by Albert Einstien who said
“insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results”.

Just to be clear, probably a bigger difference is you have 1k games played, and he is on the top competitive NA PvP team. There’s a huge knowledge gap in gameplay right there.

Anari.2137:

When will you get that the foundation is not solid, and doing a rotation of nerfs/buffs will never fix it?

Let me give you an example.

If Power creep was not on amulets, and runes and was only on the talent specs, and abilities themselves, you would have static values to modify. This means that after a while (eventually) you will get to a point of relative balance.

Your trying to diagnose the game with the problem “this is to op” when your not addressing the cause of “why it is op”.

I am providing a cure to the situation, where you (and others like you) are advocating for medicine that just dulls the symptoms until never patch.

There have been countless posts that thoughtfully addressing the topic of “why it is op” in detail…you’re just ignoring them. You’re metaphor is misplaced because your cure is like a vaccine at 100x the dose—it is the disease.

Quoting Trevor in bold:
Leave Warrior/Berserker the way it is. Slightly buff the heal skills. It seriously needs it after the power creep.
I’d agree but I think that the healing skills are fine. Once (if?) the elites are appropriately nerfed, a buff to the healing skill would make warrior sustain over the top. The only thing I’d do is have the stance trait reduce the CD by 20% instead of increasing stance duration by 20%.
Leave Thief/Daredevil the way it is.
Agreed, with the exception that the recent thief auto attack buff should be reverted. There is no reason auto’s should do more DPS than a backstab. Once elite sustain is nerfed, thief DPS should be fine.
Slightly nerf both Revenant side and Herald side specializations. “Slightly”
I can’t comment as I don’t have enough experience playing on Revs.
Raise Guardian/Dragonhunter’s vitality up 1 step.
I’d disagree. If ele and thief can manage, so can DH. Realistically, a more pressing guardian balance issue is that DH/core virtues need to be balanced against each other. Right now the DH virtues are better and on lower CD’s. Also, the last hit of hunter’s ward needs to be dodge-able within the attack radius.
Elementalist/Tempest can stay the way it is.
The elites need to be brought back on the level of the core specs. Tempest is like a vanilla bunker guard on steroids. There really are some small but thoughtful changes that could be done to do this easily. Perhaps a cleric tempest could share their ideas?
Mesmer/Chronomancer can be kept the same but Moa needs 2 changes: Lower the duration from 10s to 8s “10s is too long after the power creep” and program it in so we can jump as a Moa.
Sounds fine, although we should also consider making F5 not work with elite utilities at all.
Ranger can be kept the same. Turn down the rate in which celestial force is gained on a Druid through regeneration and healing. Turn up the rate in which celestial force is gained through dealing damage and taking damage. This is huge – If you did this, it would enable Druids to play DPS roles again and be able to access celestial avatar often enough to survive. As of now, the celestial avatar class feature is impractical to use unless you stat for enormous heal factor. This change would also still allow the bunker Druids to do what they do now so long as they are actually attacking to make up for the loss of gain from raw heal. You get the picture, balance the numbers so DPS is viable but the bunker doesn’t become over powered.
I don’t have enough experience playing druid to comment, but I agree with the sentiment of bringing a DPS role back to ranger.
Necromancer/Reaper’s main imbalance is still in my opinion, chill. The damage or duration still needs a slight nerf. It’s the AoE chilling that puts the OP in to the Reaper.
Partially agreed. Chill needs to be reverted to its pre-Nov. 4 buff state where it did 50% damage to foes above 50% health, Scepter auto corrupt buff needs to be reverted (way too much reward for auto spam), and Rise 50% damage reduction should be reduced to 33%. In fact, all of the new “50% damage reduction” abilities introduced with HoT (e.g., rite of the great dwarf, bulwark gyro) should be reduced to 33%. These things are punishing power builds too much. With all the weakness and these flying around, its no wonder the ranked arenas are filled to the brim with condi necros and mesmers.
Engineer weapons need a slight buff. Scrapper needs a nerf to the boon duration department. All of it’s boons.
Which weapons? Hammer could use some nerfs.

Anari.2137:

The difference between you and me is found in a pharse by Albert Einstien who said
“insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results”.

When will you get that the foundation is not solid, and doing a rotation of nerfs/buffs will never fix it?

Your trying to diagnose the game with the problem “this is to op” when your not addressing the cause of “why it is op”.

I am providing a cure to the situation, where you (and others like you) are advocating for medicine that just dulls the symptoms until never patch.

No, the difference is not insanity, it’s that in the first two years of the game, there were many top PvP player / developer collaborations in regards to balance, and that’s given me a realistic idea of what is a feasible scope of work load for a balance pass is.

Like I said in my previous post, we’ve had periods of enjoyable strategy/build diversity in PvP, and that’s been lost, so there is value added by trying to reclaim that with good class changes, or what you call treating the symptoms.

Also, your concepts of balance in other threads I don’t see as a cure more than cancer – seeing as you desire to take Guardian and Ranger to Tempest and Scrapper levels of survivability instead of the other way around, just from the first two class reworks.

When you propose balance changes as well, why do you hold yours in such high esteem, and request ArenaNet to sticky them (lol), while others are merely treating the symptoms?

Why do you need to treat class balance symptoms like protection uptime/weapon cooldowns on Guardian/Ranger if your highly esteemed Amulet/Rune rework has cured the game of balance issues forever by establishing a balanced ‘foundation’.

Simply put, balance is a moving target that includes amulets, runes, and class balance, and can’t be ‘cured’, as we’d still have the same problems after a feeble attempt at homogenizing amulets/runes because such big differences in intra-class play style exist.

Trevor Boyer.6524:

Engineer weapons need a slight buff.

wrong. wrong. wrong. hammer is literally THE thing making scrapper already the most overpowered build in the game alongside power herald. NOTHING about it makes sense except the auto chain. you don’t even mention Slick Shoes or Sneak Gyro which just about everyone agrees needs to be changed too. then there’s perfectly weighted…

an extra 2-3 seconds of protection or regen is not carrying scrapper, it’s the ridiculous weapon they were given alongside three really cheap mechanics that need nerfing (3x leap through healing turret, sneak gyro having no cast time = free stunbreak, slick shoes being way too domineering). it’s that simple.

sinject.4607:

Trevor Boyer.6524:

Engineer weapons need a slight buff.

wrong. wrong. wrong. hammer is literally THE thing making scrapper already the most overpowered build in the game alongside power herald. NOTHING about it makes sense except the auto chain. you don’t even mention Slick Shoes or Sneak Gyro which just about everyone agrees needs to be changed too. then there’s perfectly weighted…

an extra 2-3 seconds of protection or regen is not carrying scrapper, it’s the ridiculous weapon they were given alongside three really cheap mechanics that need nerfing (3x leap through healing turret, sneak gyro having no cast time = free stunbreak, slick shoes being way too domineering). it’s that simple.

I think he didn’t mean Hammer

Chaith.8256:

sinject.4607:

Trevor Boyer.6524:

Engineer weapons need a slight buff.

wrong. wrong. wrong. hammer is literally THE thing making scrapper already the most overpowered build in the game alongside power herald. NOTHING about it makes sense except the auto chain. you don’t even mention Slick Shoes or Sneak Gyro which just about everyone agrees needs to be changed too. then there’s perfectly weighted…

an extra 2-3 seconds of protection or regen is not carrying scrapper, it’s the ridiculous weapon they were given alongside three really cheap mechanics that need nerfing (3x leap through healing turret, sneak gyro having no cast time = free stunbreak, slick shoes being way too domineering). it’s that simple.

I think he didn’t mean Hammer

in that case then, yes rifle + p/x need buffs. otherwise i really wanted to make sure that scrapper (with hammer) isn’t forgotten about. it’s by far the most unenjoyable thing to play against alongside mercenary reaper and maybe mercenary mesmer. right now scrapper is Bayonetta-tier toxic.

sinject.4607:

Trevor Boyer.6524:

Engineer weapons need a slight buff.

wrong. wrong. wrong. hammer is literally THE thing making scrapper already the most overpowered build in the game alongside power herald. NOTHING about it makes sense except the auto chain. you don’t even mention Slick Shoes or Sneak Gyro which just about everyone agrees needs to be changed too. then there’s perfectly weighted…

an extra 2-3 seconds of protection or regen is not carrying scrapper, it’s the ridiculous weapon they were given alongside three really cheap mechanics that need nerfing (3x leap through healing turret, sneak gyro having no cast time = free stunbreak, slick shoes being way too domineering). it’s that simple.

Pretty sure that was in reference to pistol/rifle/shield.

But yes, we all know how broken of a weapon set hammer is in comparison.

*I should probably refresh my browser next time, little late to the party >_>

sinject.4607:

wrong. wrong. wrong. hammer is literally THE thing making scrapper already the most overpowered build in the game alongside power herald. NOTHING about it makes sense except the auto chain. you don’t even mention Slick Shoes or Sneak Gyro which just about everyone agrees needs to be changed too. then there’s perfectly weighted…

an extra 2-3 seconds of protection or regen is not carrying scrapper, it’s the ridiculous weapon they were given alongside three really cheap mechanics that need nerfing (3x leap through healing turret, sneak gyro having no cast time = free stunbreak, slick shoes being way too domineering). it’s that simple.

^^^ This ^^^

I am an engineer main. Hammer and sneak gyro are the biggest reasons why scrapper is so powerful. Hammer needs multiple nerfs (#3 triple leap into 1, #4 should only block, no dmg, 20% damage reduction, as it has so much utility) and sneak gyro needs a cast time (0.5-1.5 s).

The core engineer is NOT overpowered, in fact I rarely ever see core engineers outside pve. Gutting the core engineer traits would be a really unwise thing to do as it would push even more engineers to scrapper spec. We need more build diversity, not forcing all to take the same set to be competitive. Now almost all engineers are taking hammer, healing turret, elixir gun, slick shoes and sneak gyro or elixir X. The build diversity is really weak!

Engineer has a lot of lack luster traits (just look at explosives line e.g. even with siege rounds mortar #1 rarely triggers the combo fields due so small radius, give it 60+ radius as well to increase the chance). Medkit has multiple usability issues and useless #1 skill (engi does zero dmg while using it and it doesn’t even self heal). The other gadgets besides slick shoes are niche at best. Pistol/shield is rare as hen’s teeth.

Trevor Boyer.6524:

• Engineer weapons need a slight buff. Scrapper needs a nerf to the boon duration department. All of it’s boons.

I agree that the core weapons do need a buff but the traits that buff those weapons need to be properly toned down/buffed before the weapons can be buffed mathematically or even animation wise.

One trait that needs reworking is Chemical rounds (Pistol skills have increased condition duration). This is at 50% which isn’t unbalanced for the state of where the game is at but, It should be moved to the duration to the actual pistols and not by trait. Though this could cause an upset you can move 20% to the base duration on the pistols and 10% to trait duration and add condition damage to the trait. This would make it so you can get good duration on you pistol skills though slight nerf to it but it’s made up in actual damage.

To continue, with pistols they could use a little bit more base power damage. I know it’s a condition main weapon but think of an actual pistol shot it can kill you really fast of course depending on where you’re shot but it’s not all bleeding that kills you off it’s the initial impact that put you to a wounded state where the person who got shot can’t do much about it. With that said the pistols should in the future see more power damage than what there is now but the conditions can be left alone they’re well balanced.

Rifle/rifle trait: there’s nothing that can be done here because if nerfed we would never see rifle again for the rest of guild wars it would just be gone and deleted from the game even if everything was balanced right.

Salamander.2504:

Anari.2137:

Chaith.8256:

Anari.2137:

As long as you do this you will have a successful game.

It really is not practical at all when you write these wordy posts about your ideal game, as if GW2 could become self aware of its flawed theoretical foundations and be redesigned.

Think low hanging fruit – like what are the most reasonable, feasible, and effective changes that can be made to have the biggest improvement in the enjoyment in PvP?

It’s unanimous from the community’s word of mouth on balance: uniformly nerf the survivability, pressure, or both, of Elite specs. PvP has almost zero build choice because we tacked on 1 ultra elite playstyle per class to classes that often had multiple strong playstyle previously.

The difference between you and me is found in a pharse by Albert Einstien who said
“insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results”.

Just to be clear, probably a bigger difference is you have 1k games played, and he is on the top competitive NA PvP team. There’s a huge knowledge gap in gameplay right there.

Anari.2137:

When will you get that the foundation is not solid, and doing a rotation of nerfs/buffs will never fix it?

Let me give you an example.

If Power creep was not on amulets, and runes and was only on the talent specs, and abilities themselves, you would have static values to modify. This means that after a while (eventually) you will get to a point of relative balance.

Your trying to diagnose the game with the problem “this is to op” when your not addressing the cause of “why it is op”.

I am providing a cure to the situation, where you (and others like you) are advocating for medicine that just dulls the symptoms until never patch.

There have been countless posts that thoughtfully addressing the topic of “why it is op” in detail…you’re just ignoring them. You’re metaphor is misplaced because your cure is like a vaccine at 100x the dose—it is the disease.

You could play a game 1000 times, and be 1000 times better then any dev, yet we are the ones making the game. Being a player does not in any way shape or form making you knowledgeable about how a game should be modified.

This argument is presented by a lot of you on the forums. You know the meta, and the counter meta at best. There is an immense amount of other conditions that go in to balance, Like Time, Money conditions, approvals to even make those changes, and so forth.

There is so many moving parts in these things you guys (ie the players) are not aware of, i dont get a flying turkey if your rank 1 pvper in all games in the world, im still going to tell you that the worse dev knows more about it then you do.

as for 1000 times the vaccine to the disease

You have in no way proven that is the case, you post your opinion, cry about it, resort to character attacks is a good example of your logical capabilities.

The fact that you constantly avoid guardian (and other classes) doing 1/5th of what other classes are doing is a good example of that.

Anari.2137:

Salamander.2504:

Anari.2137:

Chaith.8256:

Anari.2137:

As long as you do this you will have a successful game.

It really is not practical at all when you write these wordy posts about your ideal game, as if GW2 could become self aware of its flawed theoretical foundations and be redesigned.

Think low hanging fruit – like what are the most reasonable, feasible, and effective changes that can be made to have the biggest improvement in the enjoyment in PvP?

It’s unanimous from the community’s word of mouth on balance: uniformly nerf the survivability, pressure, or both, of Elite specs. PvP has almost zero build choice because we tacked on 1 ultra elite playstyle per class to classes that often had multiple strong playstyle previously.

The difference between you and me is found in a pharse by Albert Einstien who said
“insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results”.

Just to be clear, probably a bigger difference is you have 1k games played, and he is on the top competitive NA PvP team. There’s a huge knowledge gap in gameplay right there.

Anari.2137:

When will you get that the foundation is not solid, and doing a rotation of nerfs/buffs will never fix it?

Let me give you an example.

If Power creep was not on amulets, and runes and was only on the talent specs, and abilities themselves, you would have static values to modify. This means that after a while (eventually) you will get to a point of relative balance.

Your trying to diagnose the game with the problem “this is to op” when your not addressing the cause of “why it is op”.

I am providing a cure to the situation, where you (and others like you) are advocating for medicine that just dulls the symptoms until never patch.

There have been countless posts that thoughtfully addressing the topic of “why it is op” in detail…you’re just ignoring them. You’re metaphor is misplaced because your cure is like a vaccine at 100x the dose—it is the disease.

You could play a game 1000 times, and be 1000 times better then any dev, yet we are the ones making the game. Being a player does not in any way shape or form making you knowledgeable about how a game should be modified.

This argument is presented by a lot of you on the forums. You know the meta, and the counter meta at best. There is an immense amount of other conditions that go in to balance, Like Time, Money conditions, approvals to even make those changes, and so forth.

There is so many moving parts in these things you guys (ie the players) are not aware of, i dont get a flying turkey if your rank 1 pvper in all games in the world, im still going to tell you that the worse dev knows more about it then you do.

as for 1000 times the vaccine to the disease

You have in no way proven that is the case, you post your opinion, cry about it, resort to character attacks is a good example of your logical capabilities.

The fact that you constantly avoid guardian (and other classes) doing 1/5th of what other classes are doing is a good example of that.

I haven’t resorted to character attacks at all. You did though..you told me that I “suck” and that toxic post was deleted by the forums mods. In any case, I did go into detail on why your suggestions are bad in your ranger thread. You just didn’t read them or don’t care.

Before you start changing Druid/Ranger you have to realise that the reason why people don’t play DPS builds is that most of Druid’s damage comes from pets and that Ranger’s non-Staff weapons basically suck dong against semi-decent players.

Rym.1469:

Before you start changing Druid/Ranger you have to realise that the reason why people don’t play DPS builds is that most of Druid’s damage comes from pets and that Ranger’s non-Staff weapons basically suck dong against semi-decent players.

It wasn’t always like that though. Pre HoT, you could still run a good classic LB/GS Power or a SB/Whatever Condi and that DPS had nothing to do with your pets. Pets were about CCs or sometimes a little extra damage added in to a spike.

Although these specs never found there way in and amongst tournament winning teams, they were “viable” for play. The difference between a LB/GS Power and a SB/Whatever Condi was never as wide and broad in terms of power/viability factor as you see now with Bunker Druid vs. DPS Druid. The same goes for any Core Ranger spec vs. a good old Cele/Rifle. The marginal difference in power/viability was small compared to what you see when trying to compare a Berserker vs. a Herald. <- These are the sorts of issues that need attention in HoT. The critical issues that keep entire weapon sets, utility lines, specialization lines and even full classes from ever seeing use at all.

About your post directly: It isn’t that Core Ranger weapons are bad, it’s that the staff was designed to offer too much, right along with everything else attached & released with the HoT specializations. The HoT specializations and everything attached, needs to be reviewed and toned down for the health of the game’s dynamic in spvp.

More about the Ranger/Druid/Cele Avatar suggestion:
I have spent much time since the release of HoT, testing different Ranger/Druid specs in 1v1 situations against a multitude of different opponents. Some of the opponents were good, some even better and some of them not so good at all. Either way, my documentation of the subject has rendered a few solid points of view on the performance of current Ranger/Druid specs in conquest oriented 1v1s:

• Bunker Druids can inevitably survive 1v1 vs. any opponent but they cannot kill other bunkers. Sometimes they are unable to kill hybrids. This can be a critical problem in conquest oriented 1v1s during node defense because the Druid over the course of time, will lose the node due to stealthing and being CC’d off point due to little stability.
  So it doesn’t matter if he can survive until the end of days, he ultimately cannot save a node by himself and cannot kill most of the opponents he engages with to be able to get them off the node and if he can, it takes too long. These builds are limited in what they offer a team in terms of rotations/point holding due to this. They can only effectively be played in 2v2s, 3v3s, 4v4s, 5v5s.
• Druids with bunker traiting that run marauder or some other DPS’ey amulet are not DPS characters, they are hybrids. These specs will front enough DPS to down glassy characters pretty quickly and eventually most hybrids if you can outplay them. They still however, have a difficult time against bunker specs. Again, the same issues occur: Not quite enough DPS to kill the enemy bunker or even really pressure it, not enough stability to stay on point and save the node and inevitable node lose due to stealthing but now there is an additional problem: Greatly reduced survivability for not as much DPS gained. Now hybrids and even bunkers have relatively dangerous DPS that at times will force you off a point and in to the LoS game to survive. The team fight potential of these specs is greatly reduced compared to their bunkier counterparts mainly because now, they will die very quickly if focused and aren’t bringing enough extra DPS in to the team fight for the sacrifice in sustain to be worth it “mainly because they have no AoE and are all single target”. These builds also bring little more to the table than the bunkier counterpart in terms of rotation/point holding because they incur the exact same problems as the bunker. In my opinion, specs are not viable as DPS if they don’t excel at winning 1v1s WHILE holding the node under them while it happens. In most cases at least.
• Straight DPS Ranger/Druid specs – No longer viable. Of course a Core Ranger is no longer viable, same as any other core spec but what is frustrating is that there is no way to stat a Druid for actual viable raw DPS, for a couple reasons: #1 Druid specialization is designed completely around healing, right down to how Celestial Force is gained. To actually utilize the new Celestial Avatar feature, you need to stat the spec for massive amounts of regeneration, and frequent healing at the least. If you do not do this, the gain of Celestial Force is too slow to be practical. This requires Druid players “even those trying to run marauder” to stat as a bunker if they want to utilize their new specialization feature and stay competitive against other new specializations. #2 Stating for a viable DPS means two things in conquest: fronting enough DPS to be able to quickly kill opponents while keeping/taking back nodes and having just enough sustain to do it practically. Ranger/Druid can front the DPS but will lack the traits/utilities that offer the necessary regeneration to make Celestial Force gain practical. Without reasonably frequent access to Celestial Avatar “which pretty much is the Druid Specialization”, no Ranger/Druid spec can survive any confrontation against other HoT specializations. Again, the only way to do this is to stat as a bunker, which eliminates any viable DPS oriented specs.

What is the problem here in terms of diagnosing an actual problem within the mechanic of Ranger/Druid? The problem with this class in particular is actually very easy to figure out and fix. The problem is how Celestial Force is gained. Refer to my original post in this thread for the fix that would enable viable Ranger/Druid DPS specs once again but prevent current Bunker Druid specs from gaining too much Celestial Force and becoming OP.

~ This is literally, the only thing that needs to be fixed on Ranger/Druid.